Independent candidate says association with former president and first lady reflects a career built through policy work, international service and grassroots engagement
Independent parliamentary candidate Bernadette Deka Zulu has rejected attempts to use her close association with the late former President Edgar Lungu and former First Lady Esther Lungu as a disqualifying mark against her candidature, saying those ties represent a record of public service built through evidence-based policy work, international representation and community engagement rather than political patronage.
Speaking in a wide-ranging public interview, Mrs Zulu pushed back directly against characterisations that her proximity to the Lungu household was unearned or improper, saying that each step of her career, from a governance column in The Post newspaper at the age of 17 to coordinating programmes under the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, a unit of the African Union, had been earned through demonstrated work rather than personal connections.
“When I see people talk like that, I say, thank you Lord. Please raise more so that people can know of my works,” she said, responding to questions about critics who pointed to her frequent presence on official travel with the former president and first lady, with some suggesting she accompanied those trips without merit.
Deka Zulu described how she came to work alongside Esther Lungu through her substantive role at the Policy Monitoring and Research Centre, where she held full-time employment, while simultaneously representing the former first lady at community engagements when Mrs Lungu was unavailable. She said the range of responsibilities she carried during that period illustrated the breadth of her experience rather than any suggestion of privilege. “From representing the country at the UN General Assembly or at the UN Commission on the Status of Women, speaking on that platform, to the following week being in Lundazi, seated on a reed mat with women or carrying someone in a wheelchair,” she said, describing the two ends of the spectrum her work spanned during a single career period.
Her account of how she first came to know Edgar Lungu provided further context against the suggestion that she benefited from proximity to power. Mrs Zulu said she first met him not as a beneficiary seeking favour but as part of a small group of young people who knocked on his door when he was serving as Minister of Justice, shortly before he became Secretary General of the Patriotic Front. The group included David Mvula, who she noted has since aligned fully with the UPND, and Tekla Kakubo, who she described as continuing in professional life. Together, the three had formed a youth initiative through which they sought engagement with political and governance structures of the day.
Bernadette Deka Zulu‘s career history, as she set it out, cuts against the suggestion that her rise was purely social. After leaving Roma Girls secondary school she went directly into employment with Operation Young Vote before joining The Post newspaper as what she described as the only youth writer with a dedicated governance column at the time, aged 17, writing on policy, women’s affairs, youth issues and what she called “negative vices that would rise and shake the country.” She later studied at the University of Zambia before going on to work with NEPAD in a series of roles, starting as an intern on the African Fisheries Programme and progressing to coordinator of multiple initiatives within the continental body.
“Is that to be regarded as a negative? Why should it be a negative?” she said of her working with the previous first Lady.
The line of questioning she addressed reflects a broader pattern in Zambia’s 2026 campaign, in which candidates with Patriotic Front associations are being pressed on their records during the Lungu years.Her response was to invert that pressure entirely, treating the association not as a liability to be managed but as a professional qualification to be defended. She was unambiguous in her view that serving under President Lungu, whom she referenced with the phrase “may he rest in peace,” was a source of formation she would not disown.
“It was an absolute honour to serve under President Lungu,” she said. “I was exposed to opportunities to sit in places where we could draft policies, where we could appear before various parliamentary committees. That’s how I come.”
She described her approach to policy work as grounded in research rather than rhetoric, conducting surveys, gathering public views and translating that material into evidence-based recommendations presented before parliamentary committees. She said the process gave her direct working familiarity with sitting parliamentarians and the legislative process long before she became a candidate herself.
Bernadette Deka Zulu is contesting her seat as an independent in the August 13 general elections.
The August 13 general election, in which Bernadette Deka Zulu is among a large number of independent candidates contesting parliamentary seats across Zambia, is now less than ten weeks away.
